Amazon.com The Fermata is the most risky of Nicholson Baker's emotional histories. His narrator， Arno Strine， is a 35-year-old office temp who is writing his autobiography. "It's harder than I thought!" he admits. His "Fold-powers" are easier; he can stop the world and use it as his own pleasure ground. Arno uses this gift not for evil or material gain (he would feel guilty about stealing)， though he does undress a good number of women and momentarily place them in compromising positions--always， in his view， with respect and love. Anyone who can stop time and refer in self-delight to his "chronanisms" can't be all bad! Like Baker's other books， The Fermata gains little from synopsis. The pleasure is literally in the text. What's memorable is less the sex and the sex toys (including the "Monasticon，" in the shape of a monk holding a vibrating manuscript) than Arno's wistful recollections of intimacy: the noise， for instance， of his ex-girlfriend's nail clipper， "which I listened to in bed as some listen to real birdsong." --This text refers to the Paperback edition. From Publishers Weekly Baker follows his surprise bestseller， Vox ， with a novel once again filled with elaborate sexual fantasies. The "fermata" of the title refers to the fold in time that narrator Arno Strine can induce; this allows him to stop the flow of events around him and proceed in his own fashion to undress unsuspecting women. The 35-year-old Strine， appropriately enough， works as a "temp" in Boston， moving in and out of various office situations， completing his business and then disappearing. Despite his questionable ethics while "in the fold"--fondling women's breasts， going through their pocketbooks， writing erotic marginalia in the books they are browsing， stopping their cars and replacing their music cassettes with ones containing his own pornographic compositions--Strine is blithely confident that， since he means no ill will， he is innocent of any wrongdoing. Despite Baker's vaunted object fetishism， which in all his books registers as an unparalleled gift for description， he once again fails to find a novelistic context that would lend his art any lasting resonance. The sexual escapades here--a lonely woman's fascination with sexual toys strapped to a riding lawnmower; a laboratory investigation of the role masturbation might play in Strine's carpal tunnel problem--border on the ludicrous， however titillating. Still， many Vox readers will flock to this erudite smut even as Baker stalls in his campaign to eventually succeed Updike as America's most polished stylist. Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information， Inc. See all Editorial Reviews